The Runway Awards
The Runway awards is a pitching competition held annually over the summer, which is open to ambitious early-stage businesses run by current students (including PGR students) and graduates who have left the university within 2 years of the application deadline.
£50,000 will be awarded in total, shared between successful applicants. The key judging criteria are as follows:
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Scaling Potential. We are very keen to encourage entrepreneurs to focus their efforts on projects that will make a difference in the world and are capable of scaling. We also want to raise the ambition of our entrepreneurs beyond the “Student Bubble” to think about products that will benefit communities well beyond those that students and recent graduates are familiar with.
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Proof of Traction. We also recognise that the benefits of innovation only accrue when their intended beneficiaries use the new product or process that the innovator has created. To demonstrate this, we are looking for proof that there is an appetite to adopt the product or service and that the design has been informed by evidence from the intended user community.
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Compelling Communication. There is mounting evidence that great products fail to meet their potential because users and customers simply don’t understand their benefits. Having high-growth products that customers love is not enough on its own unless founders can clearly articulate the power of their ideas.
The judges are not just looking at the maturity of the business. Clearly, start-ups that have been operating longer will be better placed to demonstrate the criteria above. But we also want to encourage ambitious entrepreneurs at earlier stages to develop great ideas. For this reason, between 1/2 and 2/3 of the fund will be awarded to enterprises that can prove traction and scaling with real customers adopting their product, while the remainder of the funding can be awarded to enterprises at an earlier stage that can demonstrate at least the intention of customers to adopt based on feedback from prototyping / other primary research and/or the willingness of partners to invest resources in the idea because they see its potential.
To Apply: Entrants for the summer 2022 awards will need to submit a 10-minute video pitch by the close of play Friday 1 July.